The best-worst-choice polytope on four alternatives

Abstract

Several papers co-authored by A.A.J. Marley helped in popularizing the best-worst-choice paradigm due to Finn and Louviere (1992). Inspired by Block and Marschak (1960), Marley conceived a random utility model for the choice frequencies of the best and worst alternatives in any proposed set of alternatives (Marley and Louviere, 2005). He then asked for a characterization of the prediction range of the model. The range being a convex polytope, an affine description of this polytope would provide a solution to Marley problem. For four alternatives, we show that a minimal such description consists in 26 affine equalities and 144 affine inequalities. The result derives from the Gale transform of the set of polytope vertices: the transform being a family of 24 vectors in a one-dimensional vector space, it plainly reveals the affine structure of the polytope. As far as we know, Marley problem is still open when the number of alternatives exceeds 4.